The Advent Killer (23 page)

‘Do you mind if I call you Antonia?’

‘Please.’

Vaughn smiled. ‘Believe it or not, Antonia, I’m on your side.’

Hawkins studied him. He looked genuine enough; certainly lacked the supercilious air of their commanding officer.

He wanted her to call him Tristan, insisting from the off that they ignore rank in this meeting. His voice was warm, his tone reasonable, and he’d demonstrated nothing but desire to work
with
her on this.

All the underhand tactics she’d expected.

In the ten minutes since their arrival in the meeting room adjacent to the serious incident suite, Hawkins had filled the gaps in Vaughn’s knowledge about Operation Charter. Obviously he knew what was going on in the media, and Kirby-Jones had given him an outline of proceedings, but now he was asking about Hawkins’ plans for progress.

Part of her was reluctant to respond. If her every move was to be reported and scrutinized, maybe it was best to say nothing. Or perhaps saying nothing would get her fired even faster. Or maybe she should just admit she didn’t have a definite plan.

‘I can understand if you don’t trust me,’ Vaughn said,
eventually. ‘You want to be sure I won’t report anything I don’t agree with to the DCS.’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

She hadn’t told him about Emilia Jeffries.

‘Fair enough.’ He signalled surrender with both hands. ‘I was trying to avoid appearing to dictate, but how about if I tell you what I’d do in your position?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘OK.’ Vaughn picked up one of the newspapers from the desk and held it up. The headline read,
DID SOCIETY CREATE NEMESIS?
‘These are part of our collective nightmare, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what’s our main problem right now?’

‘I thought you were telling me.’

‘Right.’ He laughed. ‘Well, at the moment, Nemesis is giving them all the best lines. We, meanwhile, have a leak. So we’re clamping down on what we tell our people, and on what Maguire’s allowed to say to the press, because we’re afraid of making things worse. So I say turn the thing on its head and grab some headlines of our own.’

‘Media mind games. A profiler once told me the same thing.’

‘Hunter, I know. And you ignored him because you had a plan to find Nemesis by posing online as a potential target. Hell, I might have done the same thing, but the situation’s changed.’

Hawkins decided not to interject with an update. Mike’s online search for Nemesis had led to several speculative ‘meetings’; mainly with the sorts of people Hawkins could imagine at dogging hotspots. But none of them
came sufficiently close to the physical appearance of the man caught on tape outside Summer Easton’s house the previous week.

Vaughn went on, ‘We’re two-nil down: one officer dead, another missing. At the moment, the Met look like bungling fools, and Londoners don’t back a loser. Public perception, that’s what concerns the chief superintendent. So I say be honest, neutralize the mole and win back some support from the public.’

‘And the rest of the investigation?’

‘Keep doing what you’re doing; there’s nothing wrong with that. The reconstructions on
Crimewatch
last night should bring in plenty of new leads, just keep me informed. But if we’re going to stop Nemesis, we can’t afford to lose further ground here; this type of media-facilitated exchange is about saving face and gaining a psychological edge at the same time. So I’ll put something together for the papers, and we can talk it over before sending it, OK?’

Hawkins left the meeting room deep in thought. Tristan Vaughn was sharp, on first name terms with everyone in the media she’d asked about him, and he seemed to be genuinely trying to help. His strategy, albeit focused as much on institutionalized politics as saving lives, showed promise. Yet he remained a minion of Lawrence Kirby-Jones, with whom his loyalties inevitably lay should further conflict ensue.

Anyone who didn’t expect that was a fool.

Hawkins re-entered her office holding the case file in one hand and a cup of brown liquid that the vending machine said was coffee in the other. She kicked the door closed and headed straight for her chair. She sat down and closed her eyes, rolling her shoulders, breathing deeply.

Amala Yasir had just introduced her to DS Aaron Sharpe, who had been drafted in to fill the latest gaping hole in her immediate team.

She probably should have been thankful to replace a trainee with a sergeant, but everything from the guy’s limp handshake to his tacky suit screamed
underachiever
, while a long service record coupled with low rank for his age – which had to be in the region of forty-five – backed up her assumption. It was the look in Sharpe’s eyes as they had shaken hands, however, that convinced Hawkins he hadn’t volunteered for the position: he was as shit-scared as every other officer in joining a team being systematically exterminated by a psychopathic killer.

She pushed the thought from her mind and switched on her computer, sipping the drink while the PC booted up. She logged into Outlook, deleting the regular mix of emails about the previous night’s crime reports and figures, and various internal circulars about overtime adjustment and New Year rotas.

Hawkins saw an update from the missing persons team and clicked in. As expected, it was too early for anything solid, the mail detailing instead preliminary information about John’s family and his recent work history. Nothing she didn’t already know.

She sat for a moment, thinking about her trainee detective. Did she dare hope that the killer would spare him, given the option? Even
that
scenario left him scared and alone, tied up in some dingy basement. Although that was better than what had happened to Connor.

Hopefully the full interviews with John’s neighbours scheduled later in the day would provide a lead or two.

She returned to her inbox and scanned the remaining mails for anything of interest, finding little except a message from Brian Norton entitled,
Touching base
and one from Tristan Vaughn headed,
What do you think?

She opened it and read a few words before shaking her head. It was the press release. The message had arrived thirty-three minutes ago, which meant that either Tristan Vaughn was a very fast worker, or it had been prepared prior to their meeting.

The content looked fine, however, and would certainly grab some of the headlines Vaughn was after. She spent ten minutes typing out suggestions for some minor adjustments – ostensibly to prolong the illusion that she still had a say in Operation Charter – then she replied to say that otherwise she thought it was fine.

Hawkins sat back and drained her cup, thinking. She needed a break, anything to give her back some credibility.

She looked out into the main incident room, realizing
that the cleaners must have left the blinds open earlier, having broken time-honoured tradition and dusted them. Yasir and Walker sat at their desks, working on some of the leads thrown up by last night’s
Crimewatch
reconstruction.

There was nothing solid yet, but Todd had taken DS Sharpe along to look into a prospective sighting of Nemesis from the previous Sunday morning. Even if the lead came to nothing, it would allow the two of them to bond. After all, the two men would be getting to know each other whether they liked it or not, thanks to the chief superintendent’s buddy scheme of no one working or living alone.

She’d gone straight from her meeting with Vaughn to give the morning briefing. As she’d expected, Kirby-Jones’ plan wasn’t universally popular, although she suspected at the same time that most of the squad were secretly relieved. There had almost been a stand-up fight to decide which of the men would move in to ‘protect’ Amy Scott, an attractive young DC seconded to the murder investigation team mid-week. Disappointment had followed when Sue Drayton, a middle-aged detective sergeant had offered her spare room, and Amy had swiftly accepted.

Despite Mike’s absence, Hawkins had then gathered her immediate team – those most at risk – to discuss their options. It was established that Yasir’s live-in boyfriend was a martial arts instructor; while Walker’s burgeoning family home currently housed his equally large brother. That left Sharpe, whom Hawkins hadn’t been surprised to discover was a bachelor, with no choice other than to move in temporarily with Frank Todd, whose wife had walked
out three years ago. That was, of course, after Hawkins had started rumours by mentioning that Maguire would stay with her. In the light of current events, though, speculation about her and Mike living under the same roof seemed pretty harmless.

Now all she had to do was ask him.

She thought for a moment about calling him straight away to get it done, ripping off the proverbial plaster, but decided it was best left until later. Apart from anything else, she hadn’t decided whether to admit why she hadn’t been in touch.

After spending the previous night turning things over in her mind, Hawkins had put her suspicions about Mike’s involvement in Barclay’s disappearance down to paranoia, and their recent argument to stress. There were few enough people she trusted on the force these days, without questioning Mike’s loyalty, too.

She turned back to the PC, almost logging off before she remembered Brian’s email. Opening it, she read:

Hi Antonia, have been trying your mobile all morning. Please call me asap on my personal number when you get this. Have something that may interest you. Brian.

She dug her phone out of her jacket, seeing the missed call messages, cursing her luck. She’d switched it to silent before her meeting with Vaughn, and had purposely left it that way afterwards to give herself transitory peace to think, purposely not checking the screen.

She unlocked the phone, ignoring its voicemail icon, and selected Brian’s number. He answered after a couple of rings.

‘Antonia, bear with me. I’ll find somewhere I can talk.’

Hawkins waited, listening to Norton wheeze as he walked. Initial background noise on the line suggested he was in the incident room at Scotland Yard, but he obviously didn’t want their conversation overheard.

‘Sorry about that, boss, but it’s probably better I don’t broadcast what I’m about to tell you. Might lead to complications.’

‘Sure, Brian, what do you have?’

‘Well, I know the guvernor’s been giving you a rough time recently, so I was looking for an opportunity to help out.’

‘OK.’ Hawkins began wondering how much he knew, but couldn’t suppress a quiet surge of gratitude that someone still believed in her.

‘I’ve been searching our incident room files like you suggested. Seems you were right about nobody ever remembering to include them in standard back checking. Anyway, the names you got from Emilia Jeffries came up together in an emergency call we logged a couple of months ago. Someone called Karin Shelton rang the nines in distress, saying that her boyfriend, one Curtis Rickman, had attacked her. Uniform responded, but the show was over by the time they got there.’

‘Fantastic!’ Hawkins wanted to hug him. ‘Do we have an address?’

‘Not for him, but we have one for Karin Shelton. And Rickman’s address might not be on file, but his greatest hits are. Take a look.’

‘I’m with you.’ Hawkins was already logging in to view his file. ‘Where can I find Karin?’

‘Camberwell. Flat 424 in the Heygate Estate. It’s just
across the river, so it shouldn’t take you more than twenty minutes to get over there. I thought you’d want to be first to check it out, so I haven’t raised a call on it yet. We don’t even have to link it with Operation Charter because he’s already wanted for other stuff. All we need is for you to be in the vicinity when I put out the radio announcement that we’ve got something on him.’

‘I know the area. I’ll call you back when I get near. Thanks, Brian, I owe you one.’

She hung up and studied the notes that had appeared on her screen. Thirty-eight-year-old Rickman was no stranger to the inside of a cell, but that owed more to his proclivities for vehement protest than anything as mundane as burglary or fraud. As a teenager in the nineties, Rickman had been heavily involved in almost all the prominent demonstrations of the time, against everything from the poll tax to the first Iraq war. An apparent tourist of dissent, he’d been arrested multiple times for causing damage to public property. Following several such brushes with the law, however, he had disappeared from the scene for ten years, not being apprehended once, even under a different name.

His return to notoriety in 2005, however, had been spectacular, when he’d nearly killed a man in a fistfight outside a restaurant in Hounslow. The victim had been a drug dealer and extortionist, roundly despised by everyone in the area; now reduced to consuming blended meals through a care-home straw. Rickman had earned sixteen months inside for that, but also sacks full of laudatory mail from the dealer’s previous victims and their families.

She’d seen the type before: militant vigilantes who saw themselves as dispensing the sort of upright justice the law had legislated its way out of.
The extremist moral high ground
. Hawkins felt her pulse quicken.

Since his release in 2007, however, it seemed that Rickman’s grasp of the judicial system had grown. He’d been investigated in connection with a number of attacks, some perpetrated in person, others by proxy, mostly against local hate-figures with smug demeanours and expensive legal teams. But almost none of these alleged assaults had culminated in anything beyond a caution, mainly due to a lack of evidence.

The exception was the stabbing of a known paedophile, of which Rickman had been convicted in 2012, after he was caught in the act by officers who happened to be exiting a neighbour’s house two doors along. Again his target survived, otherwise he’d have gone down for a lot longer than the paltry fourteen months he’d served.

Rickman had recently been released, four months early due to overcrowding, and had kept regular appointments with his parole officer until a few months ago. According to the officer’s records, Rickman had spent most of the visits trying to convince him that he was a changed man.

That he had goals.

Apparently his protestations had been reasonably convincing, right up to the point when he’d disappeared from his registered address in Clapham. Probably to stay with Karin Shelton.

What really compounded Hawkins’ excitement as she left her office, however, was the photo of Rickman. It was
a mug shot taken upon his latest release, showing his narrow eyes, oblique jaw and sullen countenance.

And, just like the man captured on CCTV outside Summer Easton’s house, his brown, shoulder-length hair.